Now that Tesla Motors has freed itself of federal debt, many are wondering, "What's next for the automaker?" According to its CEO, creating a quality electric vehicle that is also affordable is the main goal.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that his company's Model S is a great EV, but it's a luxury car that is out of the price range of many consumers. He compared it to the Nissan Leaf, which is an affordable EV, but lacks quality (in Musk's opinion).

“With the Model S, you have a compelling car that’s too expensive for most people,” said Musk. “And you have the Leaf, which is cheap, but it’s not great."

Musk said the ideal affordable Tesla EV would be available in about three to four years, and would be sold for under $40,000 USD. It would also have a range of about 200 miles per charge.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk

With Tesla paying off its $465 million federal loan from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) an entire nine years earlier than expected last week, some suspected that Tesla's next move would be an acquisition by larger companies like Daimler AG and Toyota Motor Corp. Daimler AG has 4.87 million Tesla shares valued at $425 million and Toyota has 2.94 million shares valued at $257 million.

While Musk recognizes that an acquisition is possible in the future, he doesn't see his company being sold to another automaker.

“Tesla just seems very expensive [to other automakers],” said Musk. "I’d guess it would come from outside the auto industry. It would be a buyer with a very large cash position."

Musk said Apple is a large company that could qualify as a suitable buyer for Tesla at some point.

However, Musk isn't selling anytime soon. He wants to stick around to continue selling Tesla's popular Model S sedan (the company sold 4,900 in the first quarter), seeing profits soar (Tesla's profit came in at 12 cents a share for Q1, which was a boost from a loss of 76 cents a share in Q1 2012) and developing the affordable Tesla EV.

"What the world really needs is a great, affordable electric car," said Musk. "I’m not going to let anything go, no matter what people offer, until I complete that mission.”

Electric propulsion exists and has been utilized in space for many years. The problem with it is not its efficiency (it's as much as a factor of 1,000x more efficient than any chemical rocket motor). It's that the thrust is so low. Electric thrusters do not have enough thrust to get something off the ground -- and may not for a few decades.

As far as manned? Once in space you could gang enough of the electric thrusters together to get the thrust you need for movement in space. (Even breaking orbit or entering orbit is a small fraction of that needed to get off the ground.)

Ion engines have their places in long distance travel because they have plenty of time to accelerate. I don't think it will ever be able to launch something into orbit from earth.

I think the laser launching platform and orbital elevator are both pretty cool ideas.

We've already figured out how to negate gravity. The problem is the device takes up the space of a large room and massive amount electricity. It makes an antigravity field of less than 1 cubic foot lol.